Has your auto repair business taken a hit in 2020? If so, you’re not alone. Stay-at-home orders, people working remotely from home, and the need for families to prioritize a reduced income has meant fewer cars being brought into mechanics for repair. Families now prefer to put off preventative maintenance for as long as they can.
Now, more than ever, you need creative and effective ways to bring customers into your repair shop. You could hire someone to stand in front of your shop twirling signs, or you could use the latest techniques in digital marketing to target potential customers who live near your shop. The former approach will entertain. With the latter approach, you will see the number of customers walking through your doors increase.
Digital marketing does not have to be complicated. But for it to be effective, it must be done correctly. Let’s look at some benefits you can receive by taking a strategic, geocentric approach to your digital marketing.
Your Online Presence Tells Customers Where to Find You
Your website is like your digital storefront. It’s the first place most people will go to learn about you, your services, and your pricing. All other forms of marketing, be them social media marketing, brand marketing, or traditional marketing, will all point back to your website. Today, your website gives you legitimacy. You don’t want it to be hastily thrown together. Our approach is to carefully craft our client’s websites with their businesses and customers in mind.
Use SEO to Get Your Repair Shop Noticed
Your website is your digital address. Search engine optimization helps you get noticed. If you search online for auto shops in your area, you will be bombarded with hundreds, if not thousands, of results. How many pages of results would you be willing to click through to find a repair shop?
According to the data, most of your customers, approximately 70 percent, will click a link for a repair shop on the first page of Google’s results. This means that if your repair shop’s website does not appear on the first page Google returns when someone searches “Your City Auto Repair Shop,” most people will not even know your site is there. When our SEO techniques are employed, your website will rank higher on Google results pages. This means that your website will have a higher chance of being clicked on.
Tell Others About Your Business Using Social Network Marketing
Social media is a free tool that you can use to advertise your repair shop to your community. You likely have heard of, and probably use, the top three social media platforms- Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Social media marketing is more than just posting about your business. Tens of thousands of people do this every day, and they get no results.
To stand out from the crowd, your social media advertising has to target a specific audience. In this case, it is people within a 10 to 20-mile radius of your repair shop. Then, from time to time, your social media campaign needs to be examined to assess its effectiveness. When social media marketing is done properly, it lets you connect one-on-one with your customers. You can establish yourself as an authority in their eyes, answer their questions, and increase your opportunities to impact potential customers.
You Will Develop Your Brand When You Connect with Your Customers
In marketing, word-of-mouth is king. If you can engage your customers and encourage them, even reward them, to recommend your shop to their friends, you are well on your way to building your brand and developing loyal customers. Most customers are looking at reviews before deciding where to take their car for repairs. Sites like Yelp have mastered word-of-mouth feedback. Yelp boasts over 120 million users, with 50% percent of those users having an income of $100,000 or more. If you can encourage your customers to leave favorable reviews, they might nudge some business in your direction.
All of this is being done to help you build a unique brand. Your brand is the motif that runs through your website, your social media advertising, and your search engine optimization techniques. The goal is not to create a perfect brand that has a corporate feel. The goal is to create something that is uniquely yours and makes you stand out from the crowd. Your customers have more options than ever for car repair. The current financial crunch means that they are careful where they will spend their money. However, a carefully crafted digital marketing campaign can help establish you as a trustworthy auto repair authority, which will make more people comfortable turning to you for their auto repair needs.
